The history of homeopathy dates back to the eighteenth century and the research of the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, who postulated the principle of “like cures like.” In the nineteenth century, Hugo Paul Friedrich Schultz postulated that toxins can have the opposite effect in small doses compared to large doses. In 1888, Schultz showed that very low concentrations of yeast toxins increased yeast growth over 100 fold. At the same time, the psychiatrist Rudolph Arndt developed his “Basic Law of Biology,” which states that weak stimuli slightly accelerate the vital activity, middle-strong stimuli raise it, strong stimuli suppresses it, and very strong stimuli halt vital activity. These separate observations were formulated by Arndt in 1888 into one of the earliest laws of pharmacology representing the homeopathic effect, the Arndt-Schultz rule, which states: every stimulus on a living cell elicits an activity, which is inversely proportional to the intensity of the stimulus. This law was later restated by Ferdinand Hueppe as: for every substance, small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, and large doses kill.
Allopathic medicine, with its emphasis on moderate drug doses, works to inhibit undesired physical symptoms and to kill undesired pathogens. Homeopathic medicine, on the other hand, begins with small doses and moves towards progressively higher dilutions to stimulate the body's own natural electromagnetic forces. One of the basic tenets of homeopathic medicine is that a cure for a disease can be evoked by using a high dilution medicine that resembles, yet is different from, the cause of the disease.
Homeopathic mother tinctures are made following monographs laid down in the various homeopathic pharmacopoeias, for example German Homeopathic Pharmacopeia (G.H.P. or H.A.B.), European Pharmacopeia (E.P.), French Homeopathic Pharmacopeia, British Homeopathic Pharmacopeia (B.H.P.) or the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (H.P.U.S.). While plants are the base ingredients for approximately 65% of homeopathic tinctures, the remaining 35% are made from many mineral, animal or imponderable substances. Thus, the production of a homeopathic tincture involves the use of base ingredients from x-ray to diamond to Pulsatilla (the Wind flower)
A homeopathic mother tincture, comprising base ingredients such as for example fresh plants, is generally prepared by extracting the ingredients in a suitable solvent, followed by the steps of comminution, maceration and squeezing according to accepted homeopathic pharmacopoeia. Suitable solvents include alcohol, water, water-alcohol mixtures, glycerine or isotonic sodium chloride solutions. Other techniques include tituration (grinding) with lactose to form a powdered dilution. Generally, herbal tinctures are prepared in a different manner generally involving the use of a solvent to extract the base ingredient without the maceration or grinding steps.
In use, the mother tincture or 1× potency (1×10−1 dilution) may be used as is, for example in diseases where the patient can benefit from the active principles within the tincture. This assumes that the base tincture is not of a toxic nature. Optionally, the mother tincture may be further diluted. Essentially, a series of dilutions are prepared from the base preparation or mother tincture. This step is called potentization and involves a series of dilutions. Between each series, the diluted substance is succussed (shaken in a vigorous manner). The process of dilution and succussion leads to a gradual loss of chemical toxicity while gradually increasing the homeopathic potency; the more dilute remedies being of greater potency.
Thus, homeopathic tinctures require a further dilution step in the production of the mother homeopathic tincture. This means that a homeopathic mother tincture is a 1× or 1 to 10 dilution of the base ingredient according to the HPUS. Additionally, it is important to note that it is not possible to reconstitute a herbal mother tincture from a homeopathic mother tincture. Thus, what makes a tincture truly homeopathic is the additional dilution process to where the final mother tincture represents a dilution of 1:10 of the base ingredient.
The dilution and succussion level of homeopathic drugs are denoted as “x,” “X” or “d” for the decimal scale or centesimal “c,” “C” scale or LM (Q) as 1:50,000 dilutions. This is explained in more detail in the table below.
DecimalCentesimalPOTENCYDILUTIONCONCENTRATIONPOTENCYDILUTIONCONCENTRATION1x or D11:1010−16c1:10121 × 10−122x or D21:10010−27c1:10141 × 10−143x or D31:100010−311c1:10231 × 10−234x or D41:1000010−412c1:10241 × 10−245x or D51:10000010−530c1:10606x or D61:100000010−6200c1:1040030x or D301:1030 10−301M1:10200010M1:1020000LM1 (Q)3c diluted 1:50,000
For example, for a “3×” preparation, the mother tincture is diluted with nine parts of the desired diluent, in either liquid or powder form. The resultant mixture is then diluted a second time, in a ratio of one part mixture to nine parts solvent and the resulting mixture is diluted a third time in the same manner. Therefore, the 3× or D3 potency is actually at 1×10−3 (1/1000) of the mother tincture.
In the “C scale” each dilution is done with ninety-nine parts diluent to the original mixture. Therefore, a 3 C potency dilution is at 1×10−6 potency of the original mixture. Ideally, X potency dilution is usually carried out with approximately 10 to 20 succussions, while C potency dilutions are also carried out with anywhere from 10 to 20 succussions. The more stages of dilution and succussion a homeopathic solution has undergone, the higher the potency of that remedy.
Critical reviews of more than 100 controlled and/or clinical studies of homeopathy show that patients received positive healing benefits from homeopathy beyond the placebo effect. Homeopathy is widely accepted as a useful therapeutic approach throughout Europe, N. America, the British Commonwealth countries, and India.
An estimated 50% of individuals in the United States are overweight. Moreover, an estimated 50% of these individuals are sufficiently overweight to be considered obese. Obesity has been recognized as a public health problem in the United States, as well as the rest of the world.
Overweight or obese individuals are at higher risk for developing diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, type-2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus or NIDDM), coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder diseases, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and respiratory problems. Such individuals also exhibit a higher prevalence of endometrial, breast, prostrate, and colon cancers. Further, higher than ideal body weight is associated with an increase in all causes of mortality.
The pharmaceutical industry is working diligently to develop drugs to help people lose weight. However, the drug products available to the general public, whether by prescription or as over-the-counter preparations, are not free of risk. Such risks are not limited to prescription and/or over-the-counter medications. The use of ephedra in nutritional products employed for weight loss has been associated with numerous incidences of arrhythmia in susceptible individuals taking such preparations.
Therefore, it would be useful to identify compositions and formulations that help individuals lose weight and alleviate the discomforts of dieting. There is a need for less expensive, safer and more user-friendly compositions and formulations for use in the treatment of a wide variety of conditions. Hence, specific homeopathic complexes are disclosed that can treat a wide number of disorders without serious negative side effects and the cost issues usually associated with conventional pharmaceuticals.